Sunday, 6 May 2012

Shooting the blossom

First of all I’d just like to apologise for my recent
absence, but I have been kinda’ snowed under with work, so…sorry!
Unfortunately, the aforementioned work has also prevented me from getting out
much with my camera, although I made a real effort the other day to make it up
to the University Botanic Gardens, Durham to shoot another seasonal must…the
blossom. I pretty much missed it last year and almost did again; a lot of the
stuff had already fallen, no thanks to the recent spell of rain and wind we’ve
experienced in Britain of late. There was just enough left on the trees to
capture some reasonable, colourful close-ups. There’s a lovely area of these
gardens called the Japanese Friendship Garden that’s surrounded by blossom at
this time of year and while the trees weren’t as full as they might have been a
week or so back, this was the first place I headed.

I had intended to shoot some wide-angle images, taking in a
broad expanse of the garden, with the vibrant pinks and reds as the focal
point. However, the slightly bare-looking trees didn’t seem to make a wide
focal length appropriate. I therefore shot all afternoon on my 70-200mm optic,
concentrating on isolating individual flowers and branches. Most of these shots
were made racked-out at 200mm and wide-open at f/2.8 to throw the backgrounds
out-of-focus. The large aperture also allowed me to handhold the shots, which
although not ideal, was necessary due to my tripod not extending tall enough to
shoot the hanging branches straight on. I composed these examples so that the
backgrounds consisted of bold colours to compliment and/or contrast with the
blossom. Most of the time I arranged the shots so that other blossom-filled
trees were visible as a blur of complimenting colour. For the final shot here,
I was shooting from a kneeling position, near the ground, with the bright blue
sky behind. Ironically this image was taken in the car park, before driving
away; the others were carefully framed and well thought-through, while this was
basically a snapshot…click and go! It also happens to be one of my favourites
from the shoot.

f there’s one bit of advice I can convey about shooting
boldly-coloured plant life such as blossom, it’s to do so under overcast
lighting; sun spots and dappled light just ruin the atmosphere completely. The
diffused light from the cloudy sky is perfectly soft and ‘wrap-around’, and is
nature’s very own soft-box, studio light. The colours will be far more
saturated than under direct sunlight to, but without looking false; they’ll be
natural! I also like to underexpose slightly in these circumstances, which did
here buy about 1 stop, as this further adds the “punchiness” of the tones.

That’s all folks...!

I’ll try and post a bit more regularly than once every
decade from now on J

About Me

Peter is a photographer, writer and editor of ShutterLogic Magazine - a new, free online publication for photographers.

I...er I mean 'He' (forgot we were trying to sound important by using the 3rd person) has been scribbling in magazines for several years now, having been featured in numerous mags including (amongst others):...

Amateur Photographer, North East Life, North East Living, Digital SLR, In My Bag The Northern Echo The Journal

His work also finds its way into calendars, onto websites and blogs and onto other continents.